The Joy of Service

Not so very long ago, this word was one that would create in me a feeling akin to allergy. I hated it. I was so adverse to it. Now I really see how I was responding to the energy build-up of distortion, as I see it, attached to this word, created over eons of human understanding and usage; but at the time it felt like an unfair weight to put upon anyone working so hard to free themselves from all restriction, a weight that was controlling and wrong.

I’ve been meaning to write this post, and another one on humility (another such word) (I expect I’ll get around to it!) since I started this blog, and have given so much thought to these words and their meanings, as I have to everything I write about. This is definitely something that is true for me – I ponder, I think, I investigate, I wonder. A lot. I am a Gemini after all. I explore what those ponderings mean for me, what arises in me from the experience of these words, the circumstances surrounding them and what effect they have on me, my own motivations behind my reactions, and so on. Guess that’s one of my favourite bits about having my mind. One which, while completely respecting the priceless effect of clearing my ‘mirror’, is infinitely preferable to when my mind is busy churning away in lower vibrational stuff (read: mental HELL for Sara). Hah.

Anyhoo, previously (and still, when I apply it to different levels of understanding) service used to mean sacrifice to me, however subtle, however ‘laudable’, and sacrifice in the way it is generally applauded on whatever level, has always felt like a great big pile of steaming crap to me, somewhere. Somewhere sensible. As if we needed any more sacrifice when we are crucified – with awareness or not – every day, in the old ways, upon the altar of ‘shoulds’! I mean, really.

Looking at it from a multidimensional perspective, I feel like this has mostly to do with my many experiences of the distortion of service, either in other lifestreams, or as part of collective beliefs (which are kind of the same, I guess!). And I feel that my strength of reaction was in part because this lifestream, the one that brings all of ME into conscious unity in this focus, was not harmonising with all the other lifestreams whereby I had fully embraced this concept of service as sacrifice in any kind of distortion, or had suffered from the distorted views of others.

Lifestreams like believing in the spiritual purity that poverty brings, or being a caregiver to those who cannot care for themselves, even if it means working myself into a early grave. Lifestreams where I give my power in service to those who are cruel or violent or unjust or greedy. Lifestreams and circumstances where you give your life in service to a collective ideal, whether it be religion, class, or just keeping up the societal appearances. Lifestreams where I have abused the distorted beliefs about service, extorting money or power or land from people who believed it my right. Any or all of these and so many more. I have found so many subtle and not-so-subtle energies within me that buck against shining, being abundant, loving myself, precisely because they seem to either endanger me (by making me visible and so opening me up to persecution/less than unconditional love) or give me power to endanger others (because my heart is not to be trusted, being human, eek!).

I so understand this, and as my awareness of the concept of simultaneous lifestreams became clearer, whether or not it is ‘accurate’, it helped me to logically understand why I might have such violent reactions to a word like service. And this was so necessary! It seems to me. How to decide to be otherwise, especially as you are becoming more conscious, than to become aware of the decision? And when you are still living in the vibration where these distortions are the norm, how else to shift yours but to have that kind of reaction, and work through everything within yourself that is creating it, in order to leave the whole sodding mess (by which I mean perfect divine creation, of course) behind?

As I have gone along, I have watched myself go through so many different phases, and they all seem to have a common theme. Identify a distortion, get distance from it – usually by anger or disgust or rage or whatever – until you can stop identifying yourself with it, then (or often simultaneously in little incremental, synergistic stages) work with what is creating that reaction and come to love it for what it is teaching you, staying open to understanding your true sense of it, your essential relationship to it.

And that has what has happened for me in the last couple of months, and this week especially, and it has come on so gradually I didn’t really notice that much (which is when I really pay attention to whatever it is…paradox!). I have known on different levels for a long time that service, for me, has nothing essentially to do with a perceived ‘doing’ on the behalf of the collective, nor to do with ‘sacrifice’ to the greater good. This has meant that any messages or teachings that speak of that in anything other than embodiment and joy terms jarred with me profoundly and often made me really cross (i.e. distancing myself!). That’s why I have loved Lauren C. Gorgo‘s amazing creations, as well as Meredith Murphy‘s, as the freedom they both bring through their being here in the way that they are resonates strongly with me at very deep levels.

And this is where it’s been getting SO interesting for me, because the more aware of myself I have become, the more I have noticed that EVERYTHING, at whatever level of expression, however distorted or dense, is a reflection of what really is. It’s the oddest, most obvious thing, which me of couple of years ago would been like ‘yeah, obviously, Sara, that’s elementary, right?’ Except, apparently, it’s just about expanding perception, and there is always more to know.

So what’s been happening – which could NOT have happened before because I was not clear of the collective and not harmonised enough, and me of before would have found the concept of this abhorrent and a huge betrayal – is I have started to really FEEL the reasons why service has been seen as sacrifice, and as a gift to the collective, and why I have hated it so much. And it’s so weird because I have seen this for so long, it’s just somehow it feels utterly different finally, as if I have reached some sort of unity within myself that allows me to see that is sort of is just as it says, somehow. (Yes, the intangibility of what I am feeling is DEFINITELY coming across in my words there… 😉 )

I have listened and watched quite a lot of Matt Kahn since the summer, and in his latest video (A Galactic Message) he speaks about (I can’t remember the words or if I’ve even remembered properly but this is how it has lingered with me!) how we won’t be truly at peace with and happy in ourselves until we surrender ourselves to our highest intention of coming always from love. He said so many awesome things (and some things about food that I struggled with and will probably have to write about here..another tangent!) but it made me realise that it was so shockingly true for me, that consciously being in complete service to the highest good of all was the only time when I felt totally free, totally at peace, totally blissful, totally fulfilled.

And the fulfillment is the crucial part there I think. And hang about a bit, because I promise I am not going backwards and suddenly caving it to ‘service as has been’. Hah! As if. Because coming to this realisation was really about working through belief in separation. Of course, my ego was going to see being for the good of all as sacrifice! Of course, bless it, I love my ego, how very logical. And stressful. And precisely because that is how, on the lower levels of consciousness, it gets played out – in transaction and give and take and fear and not being at home in your own skin and every person for themselves. Survival. And until my ego really really believes/d (it’s a cuspy thing right now!) that the greatest happiness and the greatest joy and fulfilment really does come from surrendering (‘sacrificing’) all concept of need and separation up to ONENESS, of course it’s going to feel like giving up freedom, because how else is my ego going to keep me safe from ‘all the grasping, scared people who want to take all I have in order to survive’ (since that is our experience)?

The most exquisite thing in all of this for me is that you give nothing up, as far as I can tell, other than your beliefs, which are the bit that’s restricting you any way. And you gain EVERYTHING. Interestingly, very recently my mind has let go of even analysing this – like, finally, it really doesn’t matter whether I get stuff out of it, or why its not sacrifice; this no longer feels like it’s about keeping my mind from fearful reaction, which was very important and right for a long time. What it FEELS like, finally, is that surrender and following my joy are the very same thing. And I’ve ‘known’ that for so very long, but now it seems to be singing from my cells. Because the universe, source, ME, YOU, US, only wants for our bliss, our joy, our happiness. And, ye gods, I don’t even care about that kind of qualification any more, even though it’s been so important to comfort myself with as I worked through all my separate stuff! It’s like I have got to the point where all that happens is ‘So Sara, loving the world and being of service through your love is giving you immense bliss and joy? Well great, let’s follow that then’, regardless of any beliefs I may have previously held about service. Like, only my joy is important now, at this deepest, most profound level, because I am not surrendering to some huge and separate concept of the Divine, I am surrendering to me, to ME. So fascinating.

Shockingly, I really do have the most intensely loving sense of fulfilment when I think about being here simply in LOVE for all, whatever that entails. So shocking to me. Because, although I have know that for so long, I really genuinely didn’t think it was going to feel so much like all those things I had previously avoided like the plague – sacrificing my personality, surrendering my decisions, loosening my preferences and choices and desires. It’s so odd, because I can feel I am giving nothing up, at all. I am diminishing nothing of myself, only expanding. And I feel like this complete surrender is actually a necessary stage on the path to more conscious participation in my life. It’s just, it will be so different, is my feeling, that in order to embrace it I have to give everything up, absolutely everything. Everything everything everything. As I have known for so long, and have had to do in so many different stages. Because what’s coming is truly NEW, truly ME, and nothing that came before in my understanding of life will be relevant at this stage.

Because what it feels like really, is I am giving up all my beliefs in separation, in survival, in needs, in fear, in lack, in struggle, in death, in pain, to come HOME. To remember how to be ONE. To be my most perfect, most joyful, most abundant expression of ONE in my precious and uniquely individuated way, with all of YOU precious and uniquely individuated sparks. It’s just, to get there, I have to give everything up, all of my understandings and the whole of my conscious mind, because it’s MY PERCEPTION that is changing, because that’s all that matters. If we are truly LOVE, simply believing on this human level in all this restriction, and if our true state is our divine template of BEING of LOVE and ever-expanding experiences of light, then it truly, logically, and now in my feeling of it, has to be only the perception of who I AM that has to change.

So it feels like I am giving up everything to my ego, to my mind it feels like I am sacrificing, and going against everything I have ever known. And I am, in some ways. But I am not really! Only in my perceptions. Because what I am really doing, really being, is remembering ONENESS, remembering HOME, and allowing myself to get reoriented from there in order to start truly enjoying life as one joyous expression of love, and being for the truest, effortless service of all into the bargain. Truly genius. Especially because it’s not even service really, in any conception of it, it’s just being what we are: LOVE. It’s just we need to see it in that way at different points and from different views in order to align ourselves with being LOVE. Because when you love yourself, you want to only do and be and experience loving things for yourself, and that’s all service is, as I’m experiencing it right now. Loving yourself. Loving ONE. And this comes from the most radical service-hater I have ever encountered…

Phew it’s a transcendent time. I have NO IDEA how to navigate this, and that feels like totally and utterly the point. And my sense is that even those miraculous tools like loving your heart and such have to be used loosely and freely and very very gently because at this point I can feel my mind trying to make a solid foundation for being out of ANYTHING WHATSOEVER and it only feels peaceful for about 2 mins and then I start feeling this constriction and have to let it go, to which my mind then goes ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!! We have to do this otherwise we are not going to GET anywhere and NOTHING IS EVER GOING TO HAPPEN’. Haha. Bless it. And gawd I miss HOME. Hurry on up there, arrival, this has been one long journey, and I for one am ready for a nice, deep, long, hot, bubble-bath of HOME.

Thank you gorgeous Ivy! Love all your comments so much – I’m so grateful for your presence. And yes, a thing of wonder, and such an achievement. This is so sinking in in new ways…here’s to how far we’ve come!! COOKIES!!!! ♥♥♥♥♥

Once again, you’ve echoed so many of my feelings and experiences. I was even reluctant to read this post because of the word “service” in the title! “Surrender” has been another negative trigger for me in similar fashion. I’m just starting to understand that surrendering to my own joy *is* the highest service, that this is what’s being asked of us. So very different from what we’ve been taught for so long! Thank you for this heartfelt post.

Haha I’m SO with you on this Barb! In fact, that was why it felt so right to have that title and I definitely had the irony in mind and my tongue in cheek when writing it!

Surrender has been a trigger for me too because I somehow never felt like i could be doing it enough because it never seemed to have the results that were suggested and for so many other reasons. All seems to be coming so beautifully clear each day now, just in its own way, and it does quite literally feel like it’s all completely down to our conscious amount of self-love, which I know I couldn’t have got to without all that ridicuously challenging journey. Cosmic paradox, and how I love it!

God we need a good old rest and some wildly awesome and abundant joy, I reckon. Or rather, not need, just ready to receive…haha. I’m so up for yummy…

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